Appraisal

Dear Readers,

Greetings of the day.

My brain has been swirling with the thought of,"when will organizations move towards regular or monthly appraisals of their employees?"

Today's, "Times of India" Mumbai edition, carried an article,"Every Six Months Companies would carry out Appraisals to motivate their employees".

This is a point that has been playing in my brain for a long time.

What is an Appraisal?

Is it merely a tool to ascertain how is the employee functioning?

Is it good enough to be used only annually or every six months to know how the employee is delivering and in the process try to motivate or weed out!

Ha! Indeed what an irony !

An appraisal needs to be conducted regularly.

This is not to monitor or keep tabs on the employees.

A regular appraisal done once a month or atleast once in every quarter would be of great help to employees and organizations.

How?

Employees Fear of Appraisal Would be removed.
This is a big time point.
When done annually it instills a fear in the employees brain as to what is going to happen? what would be the end result? and many other Q's that could cross the brain.

Employees Begin to Trust in Superiors and Organization.
When done regularly, employees would know what is in the offing.
Employees would then be comfortable.
Levels of Trust would increase.

Employees have Confidence in the System.
When done regularly employees would actually start looking forward to it.
This creates confidence in the system.

Employees Would Understand better when done regularly.
The employee would begin to understand the process better and ensure that his deliveries / output is better.
This creates and ensues better productivity at higher levels and also reduce the margin of mistakes , errors of commision and ommision.

Organization benefits
The organization benefits with the least amount of disgruntled or dissatisfied employees.
The spinoffs are; less attrition rates, allround motivation , bonding and solidarity within the organization, retention and enrichment of existing Knowledge-base.

Now there is a Q here?

What is that one significant gain here with regular , monthly or quarterly appraisals?

Every Appraiser and Appraisee has a tremendous and most splendid opportunity to develop their relationship, improve levels of communication between themselves,ensue better bonding, be more approchable with respect to one another, network better, understand work related issues, synchronize working.

It is a huge gain for employees and organizations.

Organizations have taken years to come to biannual appraisal .

It may now take them decades if not eons to move towards monthly or quarterly appraisals.

It need not be said that a superior who is in regular contact and communciation with his reportees, would find that regular or monthly appraisal is much easier to accomplish and time saving, than one who is hardly communicating or is in touch.

Communicating or being in touch hardly means a curtsy originated,"Hi, bye".

It means being open , available any time the reportee needs to interact , being able to provide stimulating points for employees to think differently, arrive at solutions and sometimes being the untitled coach or mentor.

In my humble opinion and belief these few points as ensivaged above, are big spurs in themselves towards employee motivation.

I dare anyone to draw a leaf or a line from this and make the change !?

The change would be a paradigm shift in itself.

Best,

Prasad.